11.1 Texinfo

If the current directory contains Texinfo source, you must declare it
with the TEXINFOS primary. Generally Texinfo files are converted
into info, and thus the info_TEXINFOS variable is most commonly used
here. Any Texinfo source file should have the .texi extension.
Automake also accepts .txi or .texinfo extensions, but their
use is discouraged now, and will elicit runtime warnings.

Automake generates rules to build .info, .dvi,
.ps, .pdf and .html files from your Texinfo
sources. Following the GNU Coding Standards, only the .info
files are built by ‘make all’ and installed by ‘make
install’ (unless you use no-installinfo, see below).
Furthermore, .info files are automatically distributed so that
Texinfo is not a prerequisite for installing your package.

It is worth noting that, contrary to what happens with the other formats,
the generated .info files are by default placed in srcdir
rather than in the builddir. This can be changed with the
info-in-builddir option.

Other documentation formats can be built on request by ‘make
dvi’, ‘make ps’, ‘make pdf’ and ‘make html’, and they
can be installed with ‘make install-dvi’, ‘make install-ps’,
‘make install-pdf’ and ‘make install-html’ explicitly.
‘make uninstall’ will remove everything: the Texinfo
documentation installed by default as well as all the above optional
formats.

All of these targets can be extended using ‘-local’ rules
(see Extending).

If the .texi file @includes version.texi, then
that file will be automatically generated. The file version.texi
defines four Texinfo flags you can reference using
@value{EDITION}, @value{VERSION},
@value{UPDATED}, and @value{UPDATED-MONTH}.

EDITION

VERSION

Both of these flags hold the version number of your program. They are
kept separate for clarity.

UPDATED

This holds the date the primary .texi file was last modified.

UPDATED-MONTH

This holds the name of the month in which the primary .texi file
was last modified.

The version.texi support requires the mdate-sh
script; this script is supplied with Automake and automatically
included when automake is invoked with the
--add-missing option.

If you have multiple Texinfo files, and you want to use the
version.texi feature, then you have to have a separate version
file for each Texinfo file. Automake will treat any include in a
Texinfo file that matches vers*.texi just as an automatically
generated version file.

Sometimes an info file actually depends on more than one .texi
file. For instance, in GNU Hello, hello.texi includes the file
fdl.texi. You can tell Automake about these dependencies using
the texi_TEXINFOS variable. Here is how GNU Hello does it:

info_TEXINFOS = hello.texi
hello_TEXINFOS = fdl.texi

By default, Automake requires the file texinfo.tex to appear in
the same directory as the Makefile.am file that lists the
.texi files. If you used AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR in
configure.ac (see Finding ‘configure’ Input in The Autoconf Manual), then texinfo.tex is looked for
there. In both cases, automake then supplies texinfo.tex if
--add-missing is given, and takes care of its distribution.
However, if you set the TEXINFO_TEX variable (see below),
it overrides the location of the file and turns off its installation
into the source as well as its distribution.

The option no-texinfo.tex can be used to eliminate the
requirement for the file texinfo.tex. Use of the variable
TEXINFO_TEX is preferable, however, because that allows the
dvi, ps, and pdf targets to still work.

Automake generates an install-info rule; some people apparently
use this. By default, info pages are installed by ‘make
install’, so running make install-info is pointless. This can
be prevented via the no-installinfo option. In this case,
.info files are not installed by default, and user must
request this explicitly using ‘make install-info’.

By default, make install-info and make uninstall-info
will try to run the install-info program (if available) to
update (or create/remove) the ${infodir}/dir index.
If this is undesired, it can be prevented by exporting the
AM_UPDATE_INFO_DIR variable to "no".

The following variables are used by the Texinfo build rules.

MAKEINFO

The name of the program invoked to build .info files. This
variable is defined by Automake. If the makeinfo program is
found on the system then it will be used by default; otherwise
missing will be used instead.

MAKEINFOHTML

The command invoked to build .html files. Automake
defines this to ‘$(MAKEINFO) --html’.

MAKEINFOFLAGS

User flags passed to each invocation of ‘$(MAKEINFO)’ and
‘$(MAKEINFOHTML)’. This user variable (see User Variables) is
not expected to be defined in any Makefile; it can be used by
users to pass extra flags to suit their needs.

AM_MAKEINFOFLAGS

AM_MAKEINFOHTMLFLAGS

Maintainer flags passed to each makeinfo invocation. Unlike
MAKEINFOFLAGS, these variables are meant to be defined by
maintainers in Makefile.am. ‘$(AM_MAKEINFOFLAGS)’ is
passed to makeinfo when building .info files; and
‘$(AM_MAKEINFOHTMLFLAGS)’ is used when building .html
files.

For instance, the following setting can be used to obtain one single
.html file per manual, without node separators.

AM_MAKEINFOHTMLFLAGS = --no-headers --no-split

AM_MAKEINFOHTMLFLAGS defaults to ‘$(AM_MAKEINFOFLAGS)’.
This means that defining AM_MAKEINFOFLAGS without defining
AM_MAKEINFOHTMLFLAGS will impact builds of both .info
and .html files.

TEXI2DVI

The name of the command that converts a .texi file into a
.dvi file. This defaults to ‘texi2dvi’, a script that ships
with the Texinfo package.

TEXI2PDF

The name of the command that translates a .texi file into a
.pdf file. This defaults to ‘$(TEXI2DVI) --pdf --batch’.

DVIPS

The name of the command that builds a .ps file out of a
.dvi file. This defaults to ‘dvips’.

TEXINFO_TEX

If your package has Texinfo files in many directories, you can use the
variable TEXINFO_TEX to tell Automake where to find the canonical
texinfo.tex for your package. The value of this variable should
be the relative path from the current Makefile.am to
texinfo.tex: